WARNING: Never carry your cell phone in your pocket!

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BLiNK

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No, cell phones don't cause cancer

Editor's note: Bernard Leikind is a physicist. He has researched and taught at the University of Maryland, UCLA, General Atomics and the Livermore Laboratory. He has written essays about the cell phone radiation controversy for the Skeptic, a publication of the Skeptics Society, a scientific and educational organization that examines controversial claims. He pays T-Mobile about $40 a month for his cell phone service, which constitutes all of his financial dealings with cell phone companies. Click here for another viewpoint on cell phones and radiation.

(CNN) -- This week, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer announced that it believed cell phones were a "possible" carcinogen, putting them in the same category as diesel fumes, dry cleaning fluid, talcum powder and coffee. They are making a mistake.

It is too large and complex a matter to work out the details of their errors here. They discount the fundamental results of their own major studies, choosing to emphasize the questionable data from a small sub-group of their subjects. They ignore the century of physics research that strongly establishes the facts.

Microwaves from cell phones cannot cause cancer. This fact arises from more than 100 years of experiments and thought in electromagnetism, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics.

A cell phone radiates about 1 watt of electromagnetic waves. The waves go in all directions to find the cell tower. Molecules in the user's hand, ear, scalp, skull and brain absorb the radiation that passes by. Microwaves try to grab molecules and shake them. The radiation fields love water molecules, and there are many of those in a brain. The fields try to shake what they grab back and forth about a billion times a second.

Warning on cell phones an important first step - CNN.com

All those molecules, however, are close to many neighbors. They continually knock into each other, transferring energy. Each molecule also vibrates, rotates and twists. The frequency of the collisions that exchange energy between all the molecules is about a trillion times a second. As the microwaves try to shake molecules a billion times a second, the molecules are sending the incoming energy to their neighbors a thousand times faster.

The energy from the phone's microwave fields rapidly spreads throughout all of the molecules in the tissues. This energy forms a part of the tissue's internal energy, and as the internal energy increases, the temperature increases.

Blood from elsewhere enters the warmed tissue. It absorbs some of the new energy and carries it away throughout the body. Eventually, the energy passes to the environment.

WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk - CNN.com

These facts describe the process by which any molecules absorb microwave radiation. If a researcher wishes to propose some mechanism by which cell phone microwaves might cause cancer, he or she must begin here.

But any such proposal faces an insurmountable problem. We all know of many processes that do exactly the same thing as the microwaves. These other processes are more intense -- some of them many times more intense -- than any cell phone's microwaves. If increasing tissues' internal energy with microwaves causes cancer, then so will these other processes.

What are these other processes? Here are some: basal metabolism, fever or inflammation, wearing a ski cap and scarf, drinking a cup of hot coffee or tea or a bowl of soup, and exercise.

A cell phone radiates about a watt of power, similar to a tiny holiday light. The body absorbs a part of that, which is rapidly spread throughout the body by the blood. This is much smaller than the amount of power produced by the chemical reactions that keep our cells alive, expressed in watts per kilogram. Converting the number of food calories I burn in a day to watts (a physicist's power unit), I am like a 90-watt light bulb.

When I exercise on a treadmill, in 30 minutes I burn 500 or 600 calories. Converting that to power gives about 1,200 watts. Divide by 85 kilograms, my mass, to find that while I am exercising, about 14 or 15 watts per kilogram appear throughout my body.

If less than 1 watt per kilogram from the cell phone can cause cancer, by some unknown means, then why doesn't my exercise, which is more than 15 times more intense, also cause cancer? Surely, we would have noticed if it did. I may sprain my ankle jogging along the street, but I will not give myself cancer.

The radiation from a cell phone is more intense in the caller's skin and hand, ear, scalp and skull, than it is in the brain. Skin cells replicate many times more often than any brain cell, which makes them more vulnerable to the breakdowns that lead to cancer. Why aren't we seeing an epidemic of skin cancer?

Readers need not worry about developing brain cancer while using their cell phones. I recommend, however, that you do not text while you are driving, and that you always wear your seat belt.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bernard Leikind.

interesting....
 

synaesthee

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The only time I ever lost/broke a phone was because I had it in a holster. Aside from that ONE MONTH I had a holster, I've always carried my iPhone in my pocket. Actually, the other day, I was thinking denim would make a great iPhone case because of all the times I've thrown my jeans on the floor with my phone in the pocket. *THUNK* .... fine.
 

labrat4sar

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The GAO just issued its report which found that the FCC's 16 year old testing procedures do not test cell phones the way they are used - in pockets. They warned that using a cell phone in a pocket can expose the user to microwave emissions that exceed the federal safety guidelines. This is especially true for children as the FCC's exposure testing uses a "dummy" head that is the size of a 6'2" 220 pound man and children's brains absorb twice the microwave radiation from cell phones as a adult's brain.

Every iPhone user manual has a warning to never carry or use an iPhone directly against the body as in a pocket - but they hide it in the fine print where you won't find it. Look in your manual under FCC compliance information and use a magnifying glass to find it. And, now Apple has made it even more difficult to find as they hide the warning on their website!!

Why are we not hearing about this? Because the cell phone industry has $$ billions to spend on funding their own "friendly" research studies as well as paying high-powered lobbyists in DC, not to mention the $$ billions in campaign contributions to key state and federal legislators - also, the corporate run media continues to just parrot industry's party line that cell phones have not been proven to be hazardous. So, if they aren't proven dangerous, they must be safe?!

So, yes - there are warnings to never wear or use a cell phone in the pocket. And there are independent peer-reviewed studies showing damage to the fetus from exposure to cell phone radiation.

Get your iPhones out of your pockets, especially if pregnant or wanting to have children.

And, don't let your children and babies play with them if they are connected to a network as they are not the safe consumer products the industry would have us believe they are.

The industry is following tobacco's playbook - claiming that it is our responsibility to prove they aren't safe....and until that time, the manufacturers and providers are raking in $$ BILLIONS in profit.....all the while hiding known safety warnings from their users.
 

BLiNK

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The GAO just issued its report which found that the FCC's 16 year old testing procedures do not test cell phones the way they are used - in pockets. They warned that using a cell phone in a pocket can expose the user to microwave emissions that exceed the federal safety guidelines. This is especially true for children as the FCC's exposure testing uses a "dummy" head that is the size of a 6'2" 220 pound man and children's brains absorb twice the microwave radiation from cell phones as a adult's brain.

Every iPhone user manual has a warning to never carry or use an iPhone directly against the body as in a pocket - but they hide it in the fine print where you won't find it. Look in your manual under FCC compliance information and use a magnifying glass to find it. And, now Apple has made it even more difficult to find as they hide the warning on their website!!

Why are we not hearing about this? Because the cell phone industry has $$ billions to spend on funding their own "friendly" research studies as well as paying high-powered lobbyists in DC, not to mention the $$ billions in campaign contributions to key state and federal legislators - also, the corporate run media continues to just parrot industry's party line that cell phones have not been proven to be hazardous. So, if they aren't proven dangerous, they must be safe?!

So, yes - there are warnings to never wear or use a cell phone in the pocket. And there are independent peer-reviewed studies showing damage to the fetus from exposure to cell phone radiation.

Get your iPhones out of your pockets, especially if pregnant or wanting to have children.

And, don't let your children and babies play with them if they are connected to a network as they are not the safe consumer products the industry would have us believe they are.

The industry is following tobacco's playbook - claiming that it is our responsibility to prove they aren't safe....and until that time, the manufacturers and providers are raking in $$ BILLIONS in profit.....all the while hiding known safety warnings from their users.

god damnit. just when i was starting to feel better about it FML
 

Timhewitt

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The sky is falling! The sky falling!

There have been millions spent trying to correlate cell phone radiation with cancer. Nothing yet

The WHO put it into the "maybe, might be" category - the same place talcum powder lives...

Until such time as science finds a real link, mine is staying in my pocket.
 

labrat4sar

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Hey, Timhewitt,

Here are some facts you may not be aware of:

The World Health Organization classified the microwave radiation emitted from cell phones as possibly carcinogenic - also this category of possible cancer causing substances includes DDT and lead.

The WHO based its finding upon an industry-funded 10 year long international study which DID show a correlation between glioma (a deadly brain cancer) and 10 years of cell phone use at 30 mins a day.

There have been hundreds of peer-reviewed, published studies done by independent researchers (with no connections to industry) showing damage to men's reproductive organs as well as reduced bone density in the hip on the side on which the phone is carried in a pocket. For the women in your life, please don't let them stash or use their cell phones in their bras as women are developing breast tumors at the site of the antenna.

The tobacco industry had ad campaigns encouraging people to smoke claiming it was good for them! If you choose to believe the cell phone industry's propaganda over the precautions issued by the world's leading scientists, that is your choice.

But, please folks - keep cell phones away from the heads and bodies of your children...... because if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that cell phones do cause cancer, it will be too late.
 

kch50428

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Just because the WHO says something, that does not establish it as fact. Anything coming out of a self-professed organization claiming to want to "better the world" is more about establishing means of controlling others while enriching their cronies and themselves.
 

Exxod

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Every electronic device emits some sort of radiation; in this day and age, there's no way to escape that. Your computer and TV give off electromagnetic radiation, as do high-voltage transmission and distribution lines; your microwave gives of, you guessed it, microwaves, and so on. Then there's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM/AM, cellular, etc. We're all exposed to these constantly. Who knows, maybe in a couple hundred years, we'll all be hideously mutated. But until there's actual evidence saying that my iPhone's going to kill me, I'll be holding on to it.
 

Timhewitt

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Sorry LabRat4SAR, you can preach your misinformed paranoia to someone else.

The WHO lost all their credibility with me over two decades ago when they became primarily a political lobbying group out to change the world and stopped doing critical medical research.

Today they support pop science and non peer reviewed papers that fit their agenda. I get enough of that from other sources, I don't need it from the WHO as well.
 

futatorius

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The intensity of electromagnetic radiation emitted by your phone is less than that of an LED. And visible light (like that emitted by an LED) is far more energetic than the low radio frequencies (RF) used by a phone. You'll get a lot more RF exposure by stepping outside on a sunny day.

So the short summary is that your self-described "expert" is either an ***** or a scammer.
 
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